Hackaday Links: December 7, 2025
We stumbled upon a story this week that really raised our eyebrows and made us wonder if we were missing something. The gist of the story is that U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who has degrees in both electrical and mechanical engineering, has floated the idea of using the nation’s fleet of emergency backup generators to reduce the need to build the dozens of new power plants needed to fuel the AI data center building binge. The full story looks to be a Bloomberg exclusive and thus behind a paywall — hey, you don’t get to be a centibillionaire by giving stuff away, you know — so we might be missing some vital details, but this sounds pretty stupid to us.
First of all, saying that 35 gigawatts of generation capacity sits behind the big diesel and natural gas-powered generators tucked behind every Home Depot and Walmart in the land might be technically true, but it seems to ignore the fact that backup generators aren’t engineered to run continuously. In our experience, even the best backup generators are only good for a week or two of continuous operation before something — usually the brushes — gives up the ghost. That’s perfectly acceptable for something that is designed to be operated only a few times a year, and maybe for three or four days tops before grid power is restored. Asking these units to run continuously to provide the base load needed to run a data center is a recipe for rapid failure. And even if these generators could be operated continuously, there’s still the issue of commandeering private property for common use, as well as the fact that you’d be depriving vital facilities like hospitals and fire stations of their backup power. But at least we’d have chatbots.
Well, that won’t buff right out. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, suffered a serious setback last week when it damaged the launchpad at Site 31/6 during a Soyuz launch. This is bad news because that facility is currently the only one in the world capable of launching Soyuz and Progress, both crucial launch vehicles for the continued operation of the International Space Station. As usual, the best coverage of the accident comes from Scott Manley, who has all the gory details. His sources inform him that the “service cabin,” a 20-ton platform that slides into position under the rocket once it has been erected, is currently situated inside the flame trench rather than being safely tucked into a niche in the wall. He conjectures that the service cabin somehow got sucked into the flame trench during launch, presumably by the negative pressure zone created by the passage of all that high-velocity rocket exhaust. Whatever the cause of the accident, it causes some problems for the Russians and the broader international space community. An uncrewed Progress launch to resupply the ISS was scheduled for December 20, and a crewed Soyuz mission is scheduled for July 2026. But without that service cabin, neither mission seems likely. Hopefully, the Russians will be able to get things tidied up quickly, but it might not matter anyway since there’s currently a bit of a traffic jam at the ISS.
We saw a really nice write-up over at Make: Magazine by Dom Dominici about his impressions from his first Supercon visit. Spoiler alert: he really liked it! He describes it as “an intimate, hands-on gathering that feels more like a hacker summer camp than a tech expo,” and that’s about the best summary of the experience that we’ve seen yet. His reaction to trying to find what he assumed would be a large convention center, but only finding a little hole-in-the-wall behind a pizza place off the main drag in Pasadena, is priceless; yes, that mystery elevator actually goes somewhere. For those of you who still haven’t made the pilgrimage to Pasadena, the article is a great look at what you’re missing.
And finally, we know we were a little rough on the Russians a couple of weeks back for their drunk-walking robot demo hell, but it really served to demonstrate just how hard it is to mimic human walking with a mechanical system. After all, it takes the better part of two years for a new human to even get the basics, and a hell of a lot longer than that to get past the random face-plant stage. But still, some humanoid robots are better than others, to the point that there’s now a Guinness Book of World Records category for longest walk by a humanoid robot. The current record was set last August, with a robot from Shanghai-based Agibot Innovations going on a 106-km walkabout without falling or (apparently) recharging. The journey took place in temperatures approaching 40°C and took 24 hours to complete, which means the robot kept up a pretty brisk walking pace over the course, which we suppose didn’t have any of the usual obstacles.
